Cybercriminals getting as good as nation state spies – report

... Euro firms getting better at detecting breaches more quickly

The European energy sector is being targeted by advanced threat actors seeking proprietary information to advance the capabilities of domestic companies, according to FireEye Mandiant.

The latest annual report by FireEye's incident response arm further warns that cyber threat groups are also targeting European industrial control systems for potentially disruptive or destructive operations.

The capability of cybercriminals is starting to rival that of nation state spies, according to FireEye Mandiant.

While nation-states continue to set a high bar for sophisticated cyber attacks, some financial threat actors have caught up to the point where we no longer see the line separating the two. Financial attackers have improved their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to the point where they have become difficult to detect and, challenging to investigate and remediate.

Enterprises in general are getting a little better at detecting breach more quickly, but responses still run into weeks and months rather than days.

EMEA dwell time (time to detection) has decreased significantly over the last year. FireEye reports that the average figure last year was 106 days compared to 469 days in 2015. "This is still much greater/nearly a month longer than the global average of 79.5 days," FireEye Mandiant adds. ®